Sunday, 10 August 2008

playing shogi on your pocket pc

I've been aching for a long time to be able to play shogi on my pocket pc, as pocket pc shogi games are non existent, especially for english language users.
Then I hit on a bright idea!, use an emulator and find shogi games designed for another format that's more popular!
So!,I downloaded Pocket GBA from this site here
Then I installed Morita shogi (GBA Rom), in pretty much the same way on to my device, and the rest is history.
Now i can happily play shogi anywhere, and believe me Morita for gameboy advance is an excellent programme, it's very powerful, has many different playing levels , and even has tsumeshogi problems,and game position problems, and many other features, though as it's in japanese it'll take a bit of deciphering to fully appreciate.You can even change the colour of the board, and the look of the pieces.(if only some of the windows pc games were as good)
In the past I think there was only one other shogi game for pocket pc that was called hellchess, and it had other games as well, but they're not around anymore, so can't send you the unlock code, and even if they did, the pieces are western style(yuk!)
So there you have it, shogi on your pocket pc.

5 comments:

Thanks for the information. Excellent idea! I gave it a try and it works remarkably well. Since I don't own a pda, I used a gameboy micro instead, which is ridiculously small.

Unfortunately I don't understand much of the text, but it seems there is a tsume solver implemented, too (a very nice feature). It's a shame that I don't really know how to make it work. Sometimes I get a solution to a problem after pressing several buttons, but I can't exactly say what I am doing.

By the way, I found another good gameboy advance shogi game. It's called Minna no Shogi. Though it seems to lack some of Morita's features, it offers 150 tsume problems, has a superior GUI, and the computer opponent is not too bad either. When you choose strongest possible computer opponent (if I recall correctly it is 1kyu) and very short playing time (otherwise it is not so much of a challenge), beating this little machine is not so easy (at least for me).

the viewable image size for my pda which is a compaq ipaq 3970 is : 2.26 x 3.02 inches, compared to the 2inch screen for the Game Boy Micro,but although i can get morita shogi to run when i put the emulator setting as full screen, i can't get Minna no shogi to work, which is a pity as i would have liked the 150 tsume problems to solve.In situations where its difficult to get a laptop out, and you want a shogi fix its ideal,though a little tiring on the eyes.One way i tried to decipher the japanese in morita is to copy the japanese down when i get an understanding, with an english note next to it.Luckily, as it's an emulator, you don't have to install software to display the japanese writing on the pda, as you would with a shogi viewer for pocket pc called shogi pad, however i've found a way of doing that for free, and i'll make that the subject of a future blog entry.

If you like tsume titles, there are several games to choose from. In case your emulator also supports emulation of classic gameboy titles, there’s for instance “Taisen Tsume Shogi” available and several others as far as I know. I once tried one of these but it’s almost impossible to play them on a PC due to the low resolution. I don’t know how much hardware power your pda has, but the PS One also has many shogi titles to offer.

In case you own a Nintendo DS, I highly recommend buying “Watanabe Akira no Tsume Shogi” which supports the touchscreen. Besides it is very import friendly, since there are not too many menues to choose from. Something similar exists for the PSP by mainichi/mycom (Todai Shogi Tsume Shogi Dojo).

By the way, the best Shogi game on a mobile system I have played so far is Gekisashi Joseki Dojo which is awesome if you want to study openings or play against a strong opponent. Unfortunately, it’s an import title, and of course you have to own a PSP. AFAIK Shotest Shogi is also available for the PSP as part of a boardgame collection. In contrast to the Xbox and PC version, it is strictly 2d. A nice diversion offers Todai Shogi, both for PSP and DS (AI is a little weaker) by adding a quiz, where you have to find the best move in a given situation. Quite tricky.

Yes you can, as the operating system is the same as Pocket PC, ie Windows Mobile.All you need to do is download and install Pocket GBA http://sunbug.net/products/view/141

Then just put 'Morita GBA ROM' into google and you will get many download locations to choose from. Transfer both programs using active sync from your windows pc, then you run pocket GBA from the folder on your device you stored it to by clicking on it with your stylus.